Hammering it down with rain today so I'm afraid we had to abandon site for the day as it would be too damaging to the archaeology to try and slither about on it in the wet, never mind the possible damage to the team - wet slimy stones and seaweed do not mix with health and safety. The team were instead taken off on an educational visit to some of the sites in Rousay including Midhowe and Blackhammer tombs. Unfortunately owing to a slight breakdown in technology there are no photos of this outing, but here's a very fine one of Tom uncovering a hearth from earlier in the week:
OK you can't see much of the hearth but it's under the board, which incidentally is one of our old kitchen worktops pressed into service to protect it, I'd forgotten all about it but it's done the job well. This is the same hearth that was sampled for archaeomagnetic dating back in 2019 by Dr Cathy Batt of the University of Bradford:
I'm not sure if these samples were ever processed or if they got caught up in the Covid backlog like everything else, but will check up on that and get back to you. Here's hoping for a bonny day tomorrow.